Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

Lenten Mission

Moscow Conference

Ask Father

Head of the Bergolianized Pontifical Academy “for Life”
Eulogizes a Leader of the Culture of Death

by Christopher A. Ferrara
February 28, 2017

Someday soon, I promise, this column will address good news in the Catholic Church, as it has in the past. The interim problem, however, is that the torrent of epochal bad news emanating from the Bergoglian Vatican shows no signs of abating. From this Fatima perspective, there remains the duty to make our readers aware of the latest staggering development in line with the Third Secret prophecy, the better to confirm the prophecy’s accuracy for those who might still doubt it.

Readers of this column will recall that Pope Bergoglio has essentially destroyed the Pontifical Academy for Life, eliminating its requirement of a pro-life oath, rewriting its statutes to convert the Academy into an “integral development” think tank involving non-Catholics and even atheists, and removing every one of the previously appointed members.

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the new head of the now neutralized Academy, is one of the cadre of progressivist pseudo-intellectuals handpicked by Francis to carry out his program, and is thus reliably “gay”-friendly and supportive of Holy Communion for adulterers in “second marriages.” The demeanor of the man is what one would expect:

With dreary predictability, Paglia has affirmed the Academy’s destructive repurposing by delivering what amounted to a glowing eulogy of a great “hero” of the culture of death in Italy. Today (February 27), LifeSiteNews reported that earlier this month Paglia delivered a 20-minute paean to none other than the deceased founder of Italy’s Radical Party, Marco Pannella, during a discussion of Pannella’s newly published biography.

As LifeSite notes, Pannella:

“headed the Italian League for divorce, successfully using Leninist-style agitprop to make it legal in 1970. Pannella took part in each and every endeavor of the culture of death – successful or not – such as the legalization of abortion, gay ‘marriage,’ blasphemy, free love, transgender rights, and so on. He wanted to end the prohibition of exhibitionism and drug use and dreamed of emptying Italy’s prisons through a general amnesty. Pannella was a proponent of non-violence and socialism, nudism and the abolition of the Concordat between Italy and the Catholic Church. His Radical Party stood for all of that and more.”

Pannella, who revealed that he was a “bi-sexual,” apparently could do no wrong in Paglia’s estimation. Paglia’s eulogy lauded the evil politician — who died without being reconciled to the Church — as a “man of great spirituality” whose death was “a great loss, not only for the people of the Radical Party, but also for our country.”

What exactly did Italy lose by the death of this ideologue, who promoted radical evil on every front? This is intellectual dilettantism of the worst sort­­: an appreciation for the artifices of “radical thought” as an intellectual construction, whose “boldness” and “conviction” earn the dilettante’s esteem without regard to good or evil.

And what did Paglia mean by “spirituality”? Only the usual pseudo-intellectual nonsense: that Pannella fervently believed in his “values,” which makes him a “spiritual person.” As Paglia put it: “His story shows how a man can help history to go forward towards the defense of each and every person’s dignity, especially those who are marginalized. … I take great pleasure in saying that Marco was truly a spiritual man who fought and hoped against all hope …”

The “defense of each and every person’s dignity” is, of course, impossible to reconcile with the murder of children in the womb, gay ‘marriage,’ blasphemy, free love, and drug abuse. But not for a thoroughly modern prelate like Paglia. For Paglia, the defense of human dignity does not mean the defense of the moral order, or even the sanctity of life, but rather of “freedom” in the modern and thoroughly corrupted sense of the word. Thus, that Pannella was fighting­ “against all hope” — meaning against moral and legal codes that restrict “freedom” — ipso facto means he was fighting for “human dignity.”

Pannella’s “spirituality,” according to Paglia, included his dream of “a convent that would not be established on the rules of others but on his own, the rules of radical thought. … He was against transcendence, he would say that rules do not descend from Heaven, it is man who creates them and makes sure they are applied. If by the word transcendence he was designating something that is exterior, far away or platonic, it is obvious that we should agree with Marco, because ideas should be incarnated in our own flesh!”

More pseudo-intellectual blather, amounting to the absurd proposition that someone who denied the existence of a transcendent spiritual realm was a spiritual man. But then, incoherent assertions are the coin of Modernist thought, which suspends the principle of non-contradiction in order continually to deny what is affirmed or affirm what is denied.

Laughter is the only appropriate response to Paglia’s declaration that “today Marco, who is full of the spirit, is still blowing and asking us to help the spirit whose breath makes history move.... I am glad that the spirit of Marco can help us to live in that same direction!” Where exactly does Paglia think Pannella has gone? To some alternate universe where he can engage in radical Left agitation for all eternity? Does he imagine that Paglia’s “spirit” is still directing the affairs of Italy’s radical Left from the beyond? Does Paglia even believe in the Four Last Things? Or has he dispensed with death, judgment, Heaven and hell in favor of some vague notion of a netherworld inhabited by departed souls who go on being just what they were life?

Let it not be thought that this ridiculous tribute to “the spirit of Marco” was some personal frolic of Paglia’s. Pannella, LifeSite further notes, “received several phone calls from Pope Francis”; and when he was dying, Francis told Paglia to “Go there immediately and greet him for me …” What about sending a priest to Pannella’s deathbed in an effort to save his soul? There is no mention of that. The important thing, apparently, was a “greeting” from Francis.

But “Marco,” said Paglia, “lived as a believer, ready to pay the price with his very self for what he believed.” That what he believed was utterly evil, including the belief that children may be murdered in their own mothers’ wombs, is apparently of no moment to the new head of what was once the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Again, however, this was no mere personal frolic of Paglia’s. As LifeSite recalls: “The Archbishop’s performance was highly reminiscent of Pope Francis’ own praise for Emma Bonino, another prominent and historic member of the Radical Party. She is one of the country’s ‘forgotten greats,’ Francis said of Italy’s foremost promoter of abortion in February 2016.”

LifeSite’s report concludes by noting that “Riccardo Cascioli, editor of La nuova BussolaQuotidiana, one of Italy’s more conservative newspapers, called the author [Paglia] of this mind-boggling eulogy the President of the ‘Pontifical Academy for Death.’” At this point in the Bergoglian pontificate, can one even say that Cascioli’s remark was ironic as opposed to literally true?